1 recipe Boiled Dish (above) 1 cup molasses or maple syrup

Equipment: Food processor or blender, mixing bowl, wooden spoon or pudding stick, ladle, waxed paper, skimmer or slotted spoon

1. If using modern cornmeal, as boiled dinner is cooking, whirl half the cornmeal for 5 minutes in a blender or food processor with one side propped up with a thin book.

2. Put all the cornmeal in a mixing bowl and skim the grease and some of the broth out of the boiled dinner, starting with about 2 cups. Add little by little to the cornmeal, stirring hard to get a crumbly-looking "pre-dough" that will stick together when compressed.

3. Wet hands and form patties smaller than your palm.

4. Set out patties on waxed paper.

5. When boiled dinner is served, turn up heat on broth, and put in corn cakes with skimmer or slotted spoon, a few at a time. Cover pot and reduce heat to a simmer.

6. Cook 30 minutes.

Serve two dumplings as a dessert, striped with a little molasses or maple syrup.

Boiled dinner was almost always followed by a hash of the leftover meats and potatoes. This was so obvious, and so variable, that early writers did not write down a detailed recipe. The name "hash" comes from the French verb to slice or chop. Older English and French hashes were sliced meat reheated in gravy. The chopped and fried hash with potatoes we still enjoy is a somewhat later development, and this 1861 recipe, from The Housekeeper's Encyclopedia by Mrs.

E.F. Haskell, suggests that some people still did not accept fried hash at that date.

"The best hash is made from boiled corned beef. It should be boiled very tender, and chopped fine when entirely cold. The potatoes for hash made of corned beef are the better for being boiled in the pot liquor. When taken from the pot, remove the skins from the potatoes, and when entirely cold chop them fine. To a coffee-cup of chopped meat allow four of chopped potatoes, stir the potatoes gradually into the meat, until the whole is mixed. Do this at evening and, if warm, set the hash in a cool place. In the morning put the spider [frying pan with legs] on the fire with a lump of butter as large as the bowl of a table-spoon, add a dust of pepper, and if not sufficiently salt, add a little; usually none is needed. When the butter has melted, put the hash in the spider, add four table-spoons of water, and stir the whole together. After it has become really hot, stir it from the bottom, cover a plate over it, and set the spider where it will merely stew. This is a moist hash, and preferred by some to a dry or browned hash."

Yield: Serves two hungry farmers, but can be multiplied according to available leftovers

1 cup corned beef

4 cups boiled potatoes and other veg­etables from boiled dinner, such as beets, carrots, parsnips

2 tablespoons butter

Equipment: Heavy frying pan with loose lid

1. Cut up and measure corned beef. Rub skins off potatoes and vegetables before cutting up and measuring them.

2. Heat up butter in skillet, add a little pepper. If you are working with left-

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